#11 🛠️ Leadership is Broken! How Can we fix it?
What does it mean to be a ‘LEADER’ today?
As an Educator and Advisor over the past few years, I started wondering if our Organizations and Institutions are doing a ‘good job’ in shaping the future generations of leaders.
Are we actually enabling and empowering them to:
Navigate uncertainty,
Make better decisions, and
Sustainably grow their teams and organizations?
Looking at the current state of the world, I’m starting to have some doubts about it.
An Impossible Position
I believe the fundamental problem lies in an obsolete view of leadership where we see the role of “The Leader” as someone who has all the answers and uses authority or manipulation to bend the will of others.
This mode of leadership was suitable when “The Leader” could demonstrate three fundamental traits.
Expertise: Proven and recognized superior skills, knowledge, or experience.
Accountability: Taking full responsibility for the good and the bad on any occasion.
Dependability: Reliable and trustworthy consistently actions for the greater good of the team and the organization.
The problem with this approach is that in our current modern world, the incessant pace of change places “The Leaders” in an IMPOSSIBLE position.
Our current world is ruled by
Uncertainty - As rules keep changing, it is impossible to develop real Expertise.
Complexity - We cannot be accountable for what we cannot control.
Ambiguity - With only partial information, our choices are not 100% Reliable.
Shifting the Paradigm
We must reframe our view of leadership from being “The EXPERT” who has all the answers all the time.
Our job is no longer telling people what to do and using any means necessary so that people will comply with what we want.
We must see ourselves as “EXPLORERS.”
Creating the conditions for new ideas and solutions to complex problems to emerge.
I believe the new role of leadership is to enable and empower people to use their creativity and collective genius to find diverse solutions to common complex problems.
Creative Leaders inspire and help us fulfill our full potential.
A leader's job is not to fix disengaged people.
— L. David Marquet (@ldavidmarquet) June 30, 2022
A leader's job is to fix the environment where the people became disengaged.
Becoming a catalysts
They do so by being catalysts and enablers so that a team can achieve more than what a single member might be able to accomplish on their own.
They become social architects, shaping the environments and conditions for unconventional and innovative ideas to emerge.
When we can pinpoint a problem and influence, guide, and motivate others to work with us to solve it, achieving a shared vision, then we’re leading.
Regardless of our role or position, when we raise our hand, stating with conviction,
“This, to me, is important and needs to be solved. I’m not sure how we will solve it, but I believe together we can figure out who’s with me?”
The major paradigm shift is for leaders to let go of the idea of heroic leadership, exercising authority, but rather focus on the ACT of leadership.
In such a context, we let go of the pressure of ALWAYS being right. All we care about as Creative leaders is BEING BETTER.
Making our team and organization BETTER.
Way too often, we make decisions driven by ego, believing that if we ain’t right, we are somewhat inadequate, less valuable, Less competent, less important.
Letting go of these preconceptions might sound challenging, at times even impossible.
But we could start by simply asking ourselves Three simple questions. When we are done, open the same questions to 3 to 5 people around you.
Here are the questions:
Ask yourself (and your team) :
What is the ONE thing I want to become better at,
When I will be better at… who will also benefit from this
What can I do daily to become better at…
This is an abstract from the [Play ‘’Uber Me.”]
When you open such questions to your team and you find a moment to openly discuss their answers, you will start to have one of the most valuable conversations you had in a while.
Takeaway
Inspire
What if we can transform our role of leaders from EXPERTS to EXPLORERS?
Challenge
Leadership is no longer about having all the answers all the time. But rather creating the conditions to become consistently better together.
Disrupt
Focus on ONE single thing you want to become better. Know how this betterment will influence others. ASK others to do the same.
🚀 Share this piece with someone who can help and sustain you in your Creative Leadership Journey. Leadership is better when shared.
Here are few ways to kick off your creative leadership journey.
[The Art of Creative Leadership] Book. If you want to know more about Creative Leadership. Grab your copy of [The Art of Creative Leadership] and gain access to our [online community] of creativeldrs.
[Join The Creativeldrs Community]. Share and learn from a community of like-minded people who want to be leaders and create a true impact. Discover Practical tools (Plays). Share and Learn from others, discover 100+ resources to grow as a Modern leader. Join Monthly meetups.